New Style Blogger

I have upgraded my Blogger account to newly out of beta style Blogger. So we shall see how it goes.

edit: I haven't been able to get the template editing things going... so I'll add the label categories in the siedebar by hand. Later.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - One

Radio Times Podcast Guide can be found here - which has some good suggestions that I am currently trying out.

On my podcast quest I have found a few more good listens -

Guardian Media - On the UK media, often the BBC's doings, on TV, on "new media" (they don't like to use that term) about the newspapers hosted by Matt Wells and Emily Bell - (Emily Bell is the head of the Guardian's Online presence - Guardian Unlimited.)

Radio One's Best of Unsigned features some good bands - well the one I've listened to so far has anyway, I feel that I should be listening to more Radio One, for all the latest - Huw Williams and Rob da Bank and all, but I'm all netlabelled up at the moment - and podcasted.

The Naked Scientists is a long podcast - around about an hour - enjoyable, mildly amusing science talk, you know the kind of thing. Off BBC Local radio I think. I likey.

I'm trying to get away from podcasts that are driven by current media monoliths, but at the moment that seems to be my bag - Guardian, BBC, The Times (I'm checking them out at the moment), O'Reilly etc. And I'm keeping a wider eye open for UK and all non-US centered podcasts and I have a ton of US leaning podcasts and I want to get a range of perspectives on life the universe and everything. Though I haven't been actively searching for certain stuff (except podcasts in French in a perhaps futile - though I don't think so - attempt to improve my French by subliminal absorption) - just podcasts in general.

Boing Boing Boing feed is here. It's the Boing Boing podcast, featuring stories from the website and featuring web people, such as 43Folders's Merlin Mann and Matt Haughey of Metafilter.

More on Podcasts when I've listened to some more - I've got abut 90 or podcasts in iTunes right now, so I'm using PlayPod (which is now free) to put other feeds into as iTunes is getting overwhelmed - as am I.

Shuffle Saver (Flickr Screensaver)

One of my favourite Flickr related Things is the Flickr screensaver Shufflesaver.

Shufflesaver allows you to view a slideshow of Flickr photos from a person (or narrow down to that person's favourite photos), or you can look for photos specifying up to three tags. You can view photos from everyone's latest photos, or from everyone's interesting photos. You can also select photos from your iPhoto collection if Flickr doesn't appeal. There are various slide tramsitions to choose from and you can set the duration for slides to stay up.

There are also options that allow you to save the current slide to a folder on your hard drive, or iPhoto, or to open the photo's page in you web browser (this doesn't disturb the screensaver, it happens in the background).
A feature I would like is the ability to get photos from pools, or from one or more of a users sets - or perhaps from various sets of various users - then it all gets a bit complex, but at leat the ability to get photos from a pool - so I could see photos from the Fruit and Veg pool, for example.

Getting Into Flickr

I have at last decided to make use of my dormant Flickr account.
Here is my page - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcanard/.

I'm finding Flickr very interesting.
Flickrbits lists many different Flickr Apps and development tools, extensions Web Apps etc. - some that I have been looking at are
Colour Picker (Colr Pickr). It's a web App colour wheel - pick a colour and you are shown Flickr pictures which consist mainly of that colour.
Flickr Leech Is very nice indeed shows a whole page of thumbnails of various Flickr htings, Interestingness (I do wonder how Flickr interestingness is calculated, gotta find out) by person, by group name, tag etc. Sometimes a page full of like 500 thumbnails. wowee zowee.

I also like looking at the food on Flickr - lots of Japanese, Singaporean and just food, food, food out there.
There's a ton of other stuff I shall be checking out.

p.s The Camera Finder is great way of checking out what kind of pics a certain camera can take and to see what kind of pics people have been taking with the model of camera you have. They have usage and popularity graphs as well.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Podcasts Time Again

I have been listening to and searching out some podcasts and podcast directory type stuff. I like the availability of Berkley things online, the one have been liking a lot is the Foundations of American Cyberculture Art 23, which talks about how modern technology has changed the culture in which we live and how we understand ourselves and our world. The nature of identity in the world of multiple identities that is the internet. You can find Berkley's podcast output on iTunes and some of them here.
Of course there are my favourites Buzz Out Loud (Tech news, Very Entertaining with a nice listener interaction thang going on) and Gadgettes from CNET.
Buzz Out Loud and Diggnation I heard about on Valleywag newsfeed, (though I rarely read it) and am so glad for having discovered them.
I haven't listened to WHYME (Worst Music You've Ever Heard) in a long time, but i have it listed in my links of note over there.
Adam and Joe is fabulous and funny as they always are.
BBC Podcasts are many and varied, (Find the BBC podcasts here) my favourites are - Digital Planet, In Our Time, The Now Show (when it's on), Start the Week and From Our Own Correspondant. Russel Brand was funny the couple of times I listened to the "best bits" Show.
Cory Doctorow's Craphound has some great sci-fi stories along with the odd talk gives by Cory, usually about Tech/DRM/CC type stuff.
There are other sci-fi story podcasts but I have yet to get down and listen to them. Escape Pod looks good.
The UK guardian also has podcasts, I have been listening to a few, they sound fairly interesting, though I have come across nothing mind blowing yet.

There are many directories, the big ones like iTunes, Odeo and Podcast.net and also Podcast Bunker. But I find that it's not so easy to find podcasts, maybe I'm missing some vital podcast portal or summink.

Links for 2nd Jan 2007

Ok I have links (if nothing else).

Semiotics for Beginners a book by Daniel Chandler is a link that I can honestly say is of the "It can change your life" variety. Info about the stuff of semiotics with enough information to get to grips with it, lots of examples very useful. For a while there reading one of the linked articles I really felt as though the world as I see it through my eyes is not inviolate reality as we take it for. Nothing has made me feel that way before. This makes me wonder if I should get around to reading John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" anytime soon.

The Andrea Dworkin Online Library has large excerpts from various Dworkin books, speeches, articles and can show you that Dworkin is not as you may have heard some crazed man-hater. See the "Lie Detector" link for a guide to "is this true about Dworkin" thang.